Implementation of new "satellite-like" swathing in standard COSP outputs

[jshaw35]

What is the feature/what would you like to discuss?

I've made changes to COSP that allows CESM users to specify satellite-like swathing patterns for each simulator within the package (e.g. CALIPSO, MODIS, etc). This allows COSP to more accurately capture the diurnal sampling of an instrument. Swathing also reduces computational costs because the simulator is only run on a subset of gridcells at each timestep.

For example, a user can specify swathing at 1:30pm and 1:30am local times to more accurately capture the diurnal sampling of instruments onboard NASA's Aqua platform. See an example with diurnal precipitation patterns from CLOUDSAT as Figure 9 here: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-169/egusphere-2025-169.pdf

These changes are bundled into the coupling of RTTOV with COSP (#1324) and should be resolved by that pull request .

Is there anyone in particular you want to be part of this conversation?

@cacraigucar @dustinswales

Will this change (regression test) answers?

I Don't Know

Will you be implementing this enhancement yourself?

Yes, but I will need some help

[cacraigucar]

@brianpm - @PeterHjortLauritzen suggested that I reach out to you to get your approval for this COSP feature

[brianpm]

I think this is a very useful feature to have. When we first implemented COSP, I think we had something like this. I'm not sure if it didn't work correctly or if it got broken over time. I don't know what @jshaw35 's implementation looks like; one could imagine a fairly generic interface to specify arbitrary sampling, but that'd probably need to be developed separately from COSP (and I don't think that needs to be done here).